FAY + STEVEN

Summer 2020 was a doozy. That we all know very well. It was a summer spent mostly at home, largely away from loved ones, and with hardly any work to do until we all figured out how to do it safely. I had toyed with the idea of offering elopement and small wedding photography for some time, but it wasn't until the pandemic that I decided to dive into it.

So many weddings were postponed and downright canceled in 2020, but love finds a way. Ideally, weddings are really about the love between two people and their desire to share life together, and not so much about the party, the glitz, the script. Elopements have largely changed in meaning for some time now, from a runaway couple escaping their parents' wrath at the idea of their union to simply a runaway couple escaping society's demands for increasingly lavish wedding ceremonies. Then the pandemic brought even deeper meaning to it: a safer, more responsible way to join two people who love each other. That's it. A virus might have upended our entire way of life, but love persists. It has to.

In September, I joined forces with Valerie Hammer, Danielle Tate, and Charles Lavallee to (safely) create an editorial showcasing Danielle's brand new elopement venue on the mountaintops of the Shenandoah River Valley. We drew inspiration from the beloved Wes Anderson film, Moonrise Kingdom, where two pre-teens run away from home and elope at a summer camp in the Maine wilderness. We were joined by Fay and Steven who are just incredibly gorgeous and in love and charming in the most British way you can imagine. Because, well, they are British.

With all this said, I'm happy to announce that I'm officially taking elopement bookings for 2021 and beyond! And now... Here's the beautiful afternoon we spent in the mountains celebrating Steven and Fay's love: